Geoffrey Rush

Dublin Core

Title

Geoffrey Rush

Subject

Synesthesia

Grapheme-color synesthesia

Ordinal linguistic personification

Description

Born in 1951 in Toowoomba, Australia, Geoffrey Rush made his debut in theater at the age of 20, and studied acting at a school of mime in Paris. He spent the first two decades of his career as a theater actor. Rush won an Academy Award for best actor and a BAFTA award for his role as a pianist in Shine (1996), an award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Elizabeth (1998), and both an Emmy and a Golden Globe award for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004). Rush was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his role as the Marquis de Sade in Quills (2000), and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The King’s Speech (2011). Other roles include Philip Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love (1998), Trotsky in Frida (2002), the voice of Nigel in Finding Nemo (2003), Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Carribean (2003), Ephraim in Munich (2005), a Broadway debut in Exit the King with Susan Sarandon (2009), among many, many others. According to an article in the Sun-Herald, Rush experiences personification synesthesia, where “…days of the week are linked to discrete colours: "Friday is dark maroon, a type of sienna, and Saturday is definitely white. Monday is a cool blue." He links the attribute to his Brisbane childhood, saying "Since I was seven, when I first learnt counting, numbers had specific colours” (Astle, 2009).